New York City Quick Hits

This last weekend I took a flight up to New York to see my lovely wife while she is on a business trip.  These little weekend trips are great because we don’t have to pay for a hotel, and can also eat for half price on the Novartis per diem.  Here are some things which stuck out to me on the trip:

• iPods.  I have never seen so many people with the white ear buds stuck in their heads.  I don’t even think most people were listening to music because they kept touching their iPods over and and over.  It was like they only wanted to listen to the first twenty seconds of each song, then went looking for another Justin Timberlake song to nod their head to.
• Dirty in so many ways.  On the train ride back to New Jersey one night, the only two open seats next to each other were right in front of the restrooms and we were forced to sit there. While we sat there, a mere three feet from some of the foulest filth imaginable, and watched people slip in and out (sometimes two at a time. . .) we realized that if we could go into our back year and rub our hands in dirt, Texas dirt, we would feel cleaner than any hand sanitizer could make us.
• Public Transportation.  Aside from my last point about the overall dirtiness of the experience, I was impressed with our ability to navigate our way around the city.  The complexity of the system is amazing when you think of all the different levels of tunnels and stairways crisscrossing their way under the entire city.
• It is all so old.  Here in the Great State of Texas the land is either for the most part undeveloped or newly developed.  Shopping centers and buildings are torn down and rebuilt every few years to keep them looking new.  Nothing looked new in New Jersey.  Only only Time Square looked new in New York.  I don’t mean this to be all bad.  There were some very quaint buildings that looked nice here and there, but for the most part I couldn’t understand why someone didn’t tear a lot of it down and build a descent looking building.